Eating crow

(Oh, and I know I said the last one would be my final post on Trump, but that's because I thought he would lose. This one really will be my last political piece for a while. Pinkie swear.)

I wrote:

The election, of course, is not yet over – and yet it is. At least at the presidential level, the outcome is already known. Indeed, one bookmaking outfit is already paying out to its clients who bet on Hillary Clinton. There’s no reason to think the firm will regret its decision.

Yeah, well, best-laid plans, mice and men, yada yada.

In coming months, there will be endless debate about whether or not Donald Trump, under other circumstances or following a different strategy, could have won this election. For me, the answer is simple: the Donald Trump we know, the Trump who exists in our universe, could not have won. He simply lacks the right stuff. [etc.]

Swing and a miss!

This election was the Republican Party’s to lose – and lose it they did.

Or ... not. With a Republican President, House, and (almost certainly) Senate, as well as gains in governorships (the GOP now holds 33 of them), the Republican Party is as well positioned as it could possibly hope to be. At least for the time being, it has won back the fabled Reagan Democrats and recast itself as a populist party that is not the vassal of Wall Street arbitrageurs (even if its standard-bearer is an obnoxious Manhattan plutocrat).

Most likely, a President Trump would not prove to be a dictator, if only because being a dictator requires a mental focus, determination, and courage that Trump doesn’t possess. ... Had he been elected, he probably would have spent most of his time goofing off on the golf course or on social media, while his vice president, chief of staff, and cabinet members did the heavy lifting.

At this point I have no idea what kind of president Trump will prove to be. His victory speech was surprisingly low-key and gracious, even if it did feature the usual unrealistic promises.

... it could be argued that electing Hillary Clinton actually pushes us a tad closer to banana-republic status by cementing the idea that the rich, powerful, and politically connected are above the law.

This I still believe. In fact, throughout Election Day, as I pondered the looming reality (so I thought) of a Hillary victory, I found myself increasingly depressed and angry. The idea that this kleptocratic serial liar would be rewarded with the presidency after a lifetime of cheating justice and failing upward was infuriating and deeply discouraging to me. A four-year slog through a Hillary administration seemed like an almost unbearable prospect. Honestly, if I had voted on Election Day, I might have pulled the lever for Trump just out of sheer despair at the alternative — even though I still think Trump is dangerously unqualified and temperamentally unfit for the job.

In such a discouraging political environment, it’s easy to give up hope. Some academics argue that, having crossed our own Rubicon, we’ve effected the transition from a republican system of government to an “elective monarchy” not too dissimilar from that of Imperial Rome ...

Not necessarily wrong, but last night the people reminded us that they are still in charge, and that the "elective" part is at least as significant as the "monarchy" part.

In this country there’s still enough innate suspicion of government to prevent a Hitler, Stalin, or Mussolini from gaining power, and, for most Americans, life is still comfortable enough to make manning the barricades an unviable proposition.

I think this is true, and I sincerely hope it won't be put to the test. In fact, I hold out a smidgen of hope that Trump and the Republican Congress will rein in the imperial presidency at least a little. (Okay, okay ... it's unlikely. I said it was a smidgen.)

Another unattractive feature of today’s politics is the assumption that one’s opponents have been hypnotized, duped, and brainwashed – assuming, of course, that they are not actually evil. The possibility of honest, intelligent disagreement is rarely broached.

I've been guilty of this as well — sometimes tarring Trump supporters in general with the brush of the alt-right white supremacist crowd, who represent only a small (I hope) subset of his voters. Most of the people who voted for Trump did so because they want a new direction, because they feel that the smug, self-satisfied elites are out of touch and out of control, and because they had no confidence in either the competence or the integrity of Hillary Clinton. These are valid reasons to support a candidate.

The truth is, the media and the #NeverTrump crowd (including me) made little effort to understand where Trump's support was coming from, outside of the spittle-flecked Pepe-the-Frog social-media trolls who were noisy and hateful, but probably not especially numerous. The more mainstream dimension of Trump's support largely eluded us, leaving us unprepared for his upset win.

So there you have it. That's my mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Having been wrong in my forecasts of the last three presidential elections, I now confess I am hopelessly out of touch with the American zeitgeist. Just when I think I've got it figured out, everything changes. Sort of like life.

For people (like me) who are still worried by the potential (large) downside of a Trump presidency, I'll add that, if nothing else, last night's outcome teaches us that our powers of prognostication are limited, and wildly unexpected things can happen. This can be a calming and even liberating thought. It reminds us that, even in our personal lives, the trajectory we believe we're on can be altered at any moment, sometimes for the better. You think you're destined to be alone for the rest of your life ... and then your eyes meet hers across a restaurant. You think you'll be poor forever ... and then your latest crazy idea takes off and makes you a million bucks. You think you have nothing to look forward to ... and then suddenly you do.

If Trump's surreal victory proves anything — if the consensus-defying election of an abrasive, septuagenarian reality TV star who's never held political office carries any larger message —it's that anything is possible. And if we ever think we have all the answers, reality shows up to give us a swift kick in the ass.

Well, it'll be fun when the people who voted for him realize how they've been duped. That he's not going to repeal NAFTA, that he's not going to make their lives better, that he'll in fact make them worse...The factory jobs aren't coming back, Wall Street and the banksters aren't going away, the people's taxes aren't going to go down under Trump (but they will for the very rich).

It will be very interesting when the Trump supporters realize just how badly he's used them, like how he's used the contractors he refused to pay,and I'm sure the millions of other people he's thrown under the bus. Because he doesn't care about them at all, they've been just a means to an end, like everything else in his life, and soon enough they'll understand that.

Today I had to talk an LGBT friend out of committing suicide. She can only get health care through ACA and without it she will be unable to get treatment for her painful medical condition. She'll lose that insurance once Ryan puts a bill on Trump's desk.

Another friend is a sexual assault survivor and was sobbing this morning.

My son is autistic. The Ryan budget would reduce or eliminate the programs he will need to survive.

And another friend, who has been fighting a brain tumor, has told me she has decided to decline further treatment and let the disease take her, for fear of bankrupting her family once she loses her ACA insurance.

Actually not so. In the face of the polls saying the opposite a Professor Lichtman who has a seemingly unblemished record in getting the presidental outcome right continued to say Trump would win by his calculations right to the very end. One headline a few days ago quoted him saying a Trump loss would upset the balance of history..that's to say it would be completely at odds with the observable truth of every previous election.

What's interesting about this is that to me it suggests all these endless analyses about what the "ordinary man or woman" was trying to say, about race and gender breakdowns in the voting patterns, about "elites" not understanding the "left behind" working class heartlands (we got all that over here with Brexit.) is complete and utter twaddle. People imposing their own pet likes and dislikes onto the motivations of others. Lichtman's so far infallible set of measures for predicting the outcome seems to be completely detached from such considerations. It's not about Trump or Clinton (except in regard to the concept of charisma)but the number of set measures that are in favour of the incumbent party at the time of the election. Trumps character and policies essentially didn't feature in the likelihood of the outcome at all (again bar him being "charismatic")

Clinton lost because she ignored poor white rust belters. Well guess what they are suffering and they didn't receive help from the Democrats; they decided to turn to Trump. The Democrats just got a reminder that they cannot take these people for granted anymore. They have a right to have their suffering addressed as any other group does and I am not going to blame them one iota for voting in what they felt was their best interest. I am getting so sick of hearing Clinton lost due to sexism, racism, xenophobia etc. She lost because she ignored a key group and because of her endless scandals and corruption.

I voted for Clinton as I felt she was a better choice but I have no sympathy at all toward her or the Democrats right now. They made their bed, they can lie in it.

Why anybody thought this blog was about providing emotional comfort or security is beyond me.

If you want New Age happytalk, there are many, many places to find it.

FDRLincoln, that's quite a list of people you know personally who are supposedly going to be impacted by a Trump presidency.

But what exactly is Trump going to do to transgendered people? He doesn't seem to care about the issue at all. And if he did his utmost and canceled all of Obama's policies on the subject, it would mean a return to the dark days of ... 2014 or so. Your transgender friend who feels "like a Jew in Nazi Germany" is faced with the terrifying prospect of maybe having to use a different restroom. It's not quite the same thing as being shipped off to Dachau.

Your friend who can "only" get insurance through ACA would be out of luck anyway, since the ACA exchanges are already in a death spiral. But in reality we have no idea what insurance system will replace the ACA or even if it will be replaced (as opposed to being modified).

Ditto for the other friend who depends on ACA. Before she decides to let her terminal illness take its course, she might want to, you know, actually *find out what her options are*. No one has the slightest idea what will happen with health insurance. Significant expansion of Medicaid is one possibility, and it would probably solve her problem.

Would your friend who is a sexual assault victim have been okay with Bill Clinton returning to the White House, and with his chief enabler and apologist as president? Or is she only traumatized by Republican sex offenders?

Look, I get it. Losing an election is hard. Those of us on the conservative side have had to deal with 8 years of Obama. Now, in large part because of Obama's missteps and overreaching, there is a backlash. The pendulum has swung the other way. Did you think this would never happen? Is it really so inconceivable that in a badly polarized country with two roughly equal constituencies representing diametrically opposed philosophies, there could be an election that didn't go your way?

So, Kris, these people expect help from the Republicans? The last time a Republican was in office, we had a total disaster of a war and a financial collapse. The Republican solution was to give a massive trillion-dollar bailout to the TBTF banks. What did they ever do for anyone else, I'd like to know? Tell them to send their kids off to Iraq?

And, unfortunately, the country is going to remain as divided as ever. I think it's almost as bad as it was right before the Civil War. I don't think the Northeast states, and California, will be able to put this behind them. It's like a marriage that's gone really bad. I for one, will never be able to consider that vile con man my "president." He's a complete and utter joke. People like me who've lived in the New York City metropolitan area have heard about his doings and going-ons far more than the rest of the country, and know him for the con-man huckster that he is. The rest of the country will know it too shortly.

"Is it really so inconceivable that in a badly polarized country with two roughly equal constituencies representing diametrically opposed philosophies, there could be an election that didn't go your way?"

But the polarization here seems to be Trump/Sanders type candidates vs "elites"?

I mean we're shortly going to be seeing proposals for funding infrastructure to create jobs and Ivanka's maternity plan from a candidate who ran to the left of Hillary's Wall Street associations with the "1% elites".

Seems like the legacy of Occupy more than a changing of hands between liberals to conservatives?

The one caveat would be immigration, where it seems Trump did run counter to Obama's overreach. Sanders, AFAIK, didn't have a plan besides taxation...OTOH I'm not sure where Trump's infrastructure funding is gonna come from?

Just to be clear, I wasn't looking for comfort here, just wanted to voice my feelings.

Michael, your point about conservatives having to deal with 8 years of Obama in office is spot on, because it occurred to me earlier today that now I know how conservatives felt during the last two elections. It's a good experience for developing empathy, but it's a very bitter - perhaps rancid - pill to swallow.

I tend to run in unusual circles for a middle-aged white guy, being on the fringes of several familial, spiritual and sexual subcultures. I personally know three transgender people for example, as well as more ethnic minorities and interracial families than is typical of a fat white old dude from Kansas.

I've thought a little more about the whole issue of some people's fears about the impending Trump presidency. There's a technique pioneered by psychologist David Burns that I've found useful in dealing with fear and anxiety. It involves identifying cognitive distortions that affect your mood and emotional state. A general introduction to this simple but effective method is found here:

To apply this approach to one of the fears listed by FDRLincoln above, let's suppose I'm a Muslim American who's deeply frightened by the election of Trump. The first thing I would do is write down exactly what I'm afraid of – identifying specifically and clearly what may happen. Often when we write something down and look at it in black and white, we realize that it is unrealistic.

Suppose I'm afraid I'll be rounded up with other Muslims and deported. If I'm either a citizen or a legal resident of the United States, this fear is almost certainly without foundation. An elaborate network of constitutional protections exists to prevent just such a thing from happening; a change in the occupant of the Oval Office does not suddenly erase the entire legal structure of our society. In terms of cognitive distortions, this fear could be described as catastrophizing (number five on the linked list) or possibly emotional reasoning (number eleven).

Once I realize that the fear is emotion-based, I can write down a more realistic assessment. In this case, I might decide that while I'm not actually afraid of being deported, I am still worried that the government will sanction more subtle forms of prejudice or discrimination. Then I can look at that fear and ask if it is realistic, or if it's more likely that, in a pluralistic society, civil rights organizations and Muslim rights groups would push back against any such trend. Am I filtering (item number one), or jumping to conclusions (item number four), or engaging in all-or-nothing, black-and-white thinking (item number two)?

If this fear, too, is seen as relatively unrealistic or at least manageable, then I can proceed to whatever remaining anxieties I may have.

The idea is to whittle away at the vague, inchoate fears that are engulfing me, reducing them to specific scenarios, objectively assessing their plausibility, and removing any cognitive distortions that make them seem scarier than they are.

A flood of out-of-control thoughts is sometimes called a "thought attack." Like a heart attack, it can feel overwhelming and life-threatening. But almost always, if you can pull back from the thoughts and assess them realistically, you can stem the flood and master the situation.

I think one reason many people are having "thought attacks" about Donald Trump right now is that the media did not do a good job of preparing the public for the possibility that Trump might win. The whole trend of news coverage focused on the inevitability of Hillary's victory and whether or not Trump would concede defeat. His victory was so unexpected that it seemed deeply shocking and destabilizing.

I felt that way, too. As you know, I thought Hillary had it in the bag. On election night, I wrote on Facebook that I was "gobsmacked, flummoxed, pole-axed, and flabbergasted." At times I almost felt as if I were having a particularly vivid dream. The whole thing seemed surreal.

A dramatic, unanticipated event is bound to produce strong emotional reactions. The problem is that these reactions can all too easily get out of control and produce a thought attack. Pulling back from our own thoughts and feelings and looking at them objectively is one strategy for regaining control.

"But what exactly is Trump going to do to transgendered people? He doesn't seem to care about the issue at all. And if he did his utmost and canceled all of Obama's policies on the subject, it would mean a return to the dark days of ... 2014 or so. Your transgender friend who feels "like a Jew in Nazi Germany" is faced with the terrifying prospect of maybe having to use a different restroom. It's not quite the same thing as being shipped off to Dachau."

Sorry Michael, but this is a vast oversimplification and not at all sensitive to the truth about living as a minority. It's not "what is Trump going to do to transgendered people". It's what Trump has already done to embolden bigots, through his disgraceful campaign that leaned heavily on inciting hate and bigotry in his constituency. I have transgender friends; life is difficult enough for them already, but in the last few months they have encountered an upswing in confrontations with the worst of humanity. Those same bigots, post-election, now believe they are the majority view in the country, and entitled/justified to attack (verbally or physically) minorities. I can completely understand any minority - especially those that Trump focused on (transgender, Mexican, Islamic) - literally fearing for their life at the moment.

FDRLincoln - I'm really sorry to hear about your friends struggles and worries about Trump'a victory, reassure them, stand with them, challenge any racism or bigotry you might see and remember that more Americans agree with you then you think.!

Michael - I don't think it has been that bad for Conservatives for the last few years under Obama as the Republicans blocked him from really doing anything. Now you control all the houses and the presidency, not gonna be a fun time for non Conservatives at all now.

I also think people worried about the direction the USA have taken need not worry too much long term, Trump beat a historically bad and unpopular candidate only due to the electoral college system, if the Dems put up someone decent next time they should beat him or whoever else runs. They have a lot of work to do though, especially in Congress and the Senate.

I suspect there will be racial tensions of the kind we've had here in the UK since the referendum. The result has been a great deal of racial abuse, threats of violence and a significant amount of actual violence directed towards immigrants. Looking at such prospects objectively will not lessen their likelyhood or potential.

The bigots and thugs of America now have a leader who blatantly endorses their sick mentality. And I don't predict that respectful behaviour towards women will be on the increase any time soon. It is no neurosis to feel afraid for the future under the present circumstances. The people need a leader they can respect for reasons other than the ability to be the ringleader of a gang of playground bullies whose main fear has been that they might have to give up some of their military toys and look up to a female leader. The US presidential campaign has been childish in the extreme and the result farcical beyond belief.

If one eats the feathers too, like in the pic, crow can add a lot of beneficial fiber to one's diet.

Regarding the ACA, Michael is correct; it is dying anyhow. Even if Clinton was elected, insurance carriers would stop carrying it. There are many other ways for low income folks to receive care. It might take some leg work to find those means, but they're out there.

My wife and I remote viewed the election every few weeks starting last fall (I find the combined effort always produces better results than individual when it comes to the two of us). Trump always came up the winner. Additionally, when I allowed myself to let go feel the vibe, the energy, the Trump force was always vastly more powerful.

My rational mind doubted this result and I began to wonder how I could reconcile the RV results with material facts. The answer lay in the polls. The methodology was terrible and the samples highly skewed toward democrats. Having powerful statistical software available to me at work, including demographic mapping features, etc., I basically took the polls and unskewed them and they consistently showed that Trump was winning. This was true at the national level as well as the state level in the swing states wherever that data was available at the demo level in the polling methodology.

Why were the polls so poorly done? Could be just laziness on the pollers' part. Could be part of an info war. Who knows? I suspect a mixture. The latter b/c someone like Nate Silver should know better. Maybe he and the rest were just drinking the coolaid, as they say.

Every time I hear an industry or govt program or military leaders(or whatever) proposing that fundamental principles (like representative sampling) can be ignored, it turns out that sector is on the verge of failing massively, perhaps never to return. I say political polling is going to be seen now as something more like infotainment than real science.

"The result has been a great deal of racial abuse, threats of violence and a significant amount of actual violence directed towards immigrants. Looking at such prospects objectively will not lessen their likelyhood or potential."

That's a fair point, Julie. It echoes the material in the link I just posted. If someone is afraid that Trump's victory will further embolden and empower the odious alt-right goons who post Pepe the Frog memes and images of the Holocaust, it's not an irrational fear. OTOH, if they are worried that Trump will become a dictator and impose discriminatory laws by fiat, I think they are being unrealistic. That's why it's so useful to identify specifically what the fear is. Some fears are more fact-based than others.

Even fact-based fears, however, can still be mitigated by the application of the CBT method I described. Often a fear starts out as reasonable enough but then feeds on itself and grows out of control. Also, by assessing the fear objectively, we can come up with coping strategies that elude us otherwise. We can see alternative scenarios rather than engaging in "fortune telling" (another cognitive distortion). There is no way to know, right now, what shape the future holds.

One perfectly possible scenario is that Trump will prove so divisive and unpopular that he will accomplish nothing, or that he will overreach dramatically and be impeached. (Remember that most of the Republican leadership is skeptical of him at best, and would prefer Mike Pence as president.) Another possible scenario is that Trump, who until recently was a typical Manhattan liberal on most issues, will revert to type, just as some "conservative" Supreme Court justices have moved left after being confirmed. Another possibility is that Trump, who seems mainly interested in making deals, will turn out to be a non-ideological pragmatist.

In all these scenarios, the alt-right crowd will be bitterly disappointed. And any of them is at least as plausible as a continuation of the crude rhetoric Trump used in the primaries (but not so much in the general campaign).

Trump's victory speech struck a markedly different tone than his combative campaign style. It could have been a one-off event, but we can hope it will be a harbinger. Most presidents grow in office. No one expected much of Chester Arthur, but after Garfield's assassination he astonished his critics by governing in a responsible and effective manner and instituting needed reforms. Gerald Ford was initially seen as a nonentity but, once in power, proved himself decent and capable. People thought Reagan would start WWIII; instead he presided over eight years of peace and a significant thaw in the Cold War. Bill Clinton's first two years were rocky, but he steadied himself and ended up as a generally successful president.

Eric Newhill said:
"My wife and I remote viewed the election every few weeks starting last fall (I find the combined effort always produces better results than individual when it comes to the two of us). Trump always came up the winner".

It would be great if someone could successfully remote view the future *before it actually happens* instead of always claiming to have done so after the event.

My close friend L earns about $50,000 a year. She could not afford health insurance before ACA due to pre-existing conditions and her job does not offer it. After ACA, she was able to purchase insurance on the exchange and was not denied due to her pre-existing condition. Without treatment she has severe and constant back pain.

If ACA is repealed, she will lose her insurance and will be denied due to pre-existing conditions again. She is planning suicide if that happens, something she was on the verge of before ACA.

I suspect he may not be as successful as people think. He claims he has correctly predicted the popular vote from 1984 onward. In that case he would have predicted a Gore win in 2000. That clashes with the connotation of his claim that he's correctly predicted every election result (i.e., the winner) since 1984. And, by his popular-vote criterion, he should have predicted a Clinton win this year (which he didn't).

Anyway, he's still beat the null dormals—and he's done so by being a contrarian, which I like. We need more such.

For myself, I'm not as much afraid as disappointed: disappointed in my fellow humans to think they could, in the 21st Century, fall in line with such political crudity. Trumps's was a hate campaign and he brought to light the serious haters among us.

There's no bad in any race that isn't in us all. But to pedestrian thinkers, the problem lies always with others. Yes, I know, psychological projection - but of the most dangerous kind. The morally weak always fall in line with a bully. That is the saddest and most dispiriting fact of all. When will we ever learn?

My hope is that Trump will now find himself somewhat out of his depth and will, by comparison with his former persona of aggressive, backward-thinking rhetoric, turn out to be a damp squib: all 'piss and wind' as we say here in the UK. And, let's face it, his name suggests he's halfway there already!

I think that Donald Trump is a goal-oriented person. Once he had secured the nomination, by whatever disgusting means were available to him, he moved on to winning the presidency. Now that he has accomplished that goal I think that we will finally see the true Donald Trump as he is behind closed doors. There may be some evidence of this in his acceptance speech.

I think he will set goals and to the extent that Congress agrees with him, he will implement changes one step at a time until the individual goal is achieved or it becomes obvious to him that he needs to move on. The enormity of the presidency has the potential to change every person who assumes that office. Donald Trump will undoubtedly change the public persona that he had assumed in order to succeed as an entertainer with a highly rated television show. He is now President of the United States of America. I would expect him to cease being an entertainer and focus on the goal of being a leader of all of the people.

To those who don’t condone Trump's personal behaviors and beliefs I would hope that they at least give him the same chance that Obama was given to show what he can do.

If he screws up, then impeach him and quickly remove him from office; don't vote him in for a second term. That's what America is all about. - AOD

You say,"And I don't predict that respectful behaviour towards women will be on the increase any time soon."

Once upon a time women in America were respected as 'ladies' and 'put on a pedestal' so to speak by men. Women used to respect themselves in dress, speech and behaviors. Now prominent female roll models in the U.S. for young girls include Miley Cyrus, Bruce Jenner, the Kardashians, Lena Dunham, Beyonce, Ellen Degeneres, and others who have no interest in respecting themselves or other women. There is nothing about their behaviors, dress or speech than announces that these females are 'ladies'. Until women start respecting themselves, don't expect men to respect them. - AOD

Sorry, FDRLincoln, but that's not a fact-based prediction at all. Nobody has any idea what will replace Obamacare, if it is even repealed (which is by no means certain). In any event, Trump has said he wants to retain the change in the law that allows people to get insurance even when they have pre-existing conditions.

It took me less than 30 seconds to find this information using Google. Your friend claims to be contemplating suicide, yet has not taken even *half a minute* to acquaint herself with the most basic facts. Do you see why I have trouble taking this kind of melodrama seriously?

I think there are two possibilities: 1) your friend wants attention and is acting hysterical in order to get it, in which case she probably has no intention of committing suicide – though you never know; or 2) your friend has a serious mental illness such as clinical depression, which makes her turn to suicide as her first option whenever she encounters a real or potential setback.

I am no expert, but my advice would be to get her to a qualified therapist, rather than trying to treat her yourself. People whose first response to difficulty in life is to plan their own death are in need of competent professional treatment, ASAP.

Just to clarify the cognitive distortion issue, let's look at the Obamacare concerns raised by FDRLincoln through the lens of this technique.

FDR's friend is contemplating suicide because she does not believe she will be able to get insurance once Obamacare is repealed (she believes she cannot afford non-ACA insurance, and would be unable to get it anyway because she has a pre-existing condition).

One cognitive distortion here is fortune-telling, or predicting the future. No one knows whether or not Obamacare will be repealed (there will certainly be an attempt, but Senate Democrats may filibuster it). Also, no one knows what will replace Obamacare. As I noted above, Trump is on record as saying he wants to preserve the (very popular) provision that makes it possible for people to get coverage even with pre-existing conditions.

Politically, it would hardly be popular to make a change that results in a drastic increase in insurance prices. The effort will presumably be to keep the prices fairly low. How this would be done, I have no idea, but unless the Republican Party has a deathwish, they are probably going to at least attempt it. FDR's friend is apparently assuming either that the Republicans want to be thrown out of office en masse for raising everybody's premiums, or that whatever solution they come up with will instantly and decisively fail. This is more fortune-telling, combined with catastrophizing.

Another cognitive distortion seen here is jumping to conclusions. The friend assumes that if Obamacare is repealed, and if the program that replaces it does not contain the provisions she wants, she will be completely out of options and will have to die. As we've seen, her assumptions are not necessarily realistic. But even if they prove true, there will almost certainly be other options available to her. For instance, there is talk of a significant expansion of Medicaid. Who knows what other provisions a new law would contain? What is the point of panicking when there is no definite information yet? We might characterize this reaction as emotional reasoning (another cognitive distortion).

So what we seem to be looking at is a combination of fortune-telling, jumping to conclusions, emotional reasoning, and catastrophizing. A pretty potent brew! Basically, it's an all-out "thought attack." If the friend were merely upset, I would suggest having her try to look at her own thoughts and assumptions more objectively. Given that she is apparently prone to contemplating suicide and may be doing so now, I still think it would be better for her to get *immediate* professional help.

At the very least, it would be good if anyone counseling her would refrain from suggesting that her fears are "fact-based," as this is not only untrue but potentially quite dangerous, given her apparently unstable state of mind.

AOD, I'm really surprised you could write that garbage about "ladies." You are, of course, blaming the victim, which is the typical Republican attitude. Let us hope that as a business owner that you don't put your words into action, as you could find yourself at the wrong end of a lawsuit.

There's going to be a lot of hurting for the Trump rural base when he gets to work. I would think food prices for one would go up quite a bit once he deports the low-paid immigrant workers in the fields and meat plants. Americans aren't going to work for those wages, if it all. They should also expect more fracking, which means poisoned water as he dismantles the EPA. But who needs regulations anyway?

I think there is a simple reason why Trump was elected. Hillary Clinton was a candidate with too much serious negative baggage. It's is not that people voted for Trump it is that they voted against Hillary. ( I am one of those.) Those of us that voted against Hillary will be watching Trump very carefully and if he makes any serious misstep, we will be the first to demand his removal from office. - AOD

Julie said,"My hope is that Trump will now find himself somewhat out of his depth and will, by comparison with his former persona of aggressive, backward-thinking rhetoric, turn out to be a damp squib: all 'piss and wind' as we say here in the UK. And, let's face it, his name suggests he's halfway there already!"

In other words, you hope that Donald Trump will fail as President of the United States! That's very big-hearted of you. - AOD

The alt-right supremacist crowd was the good guys all along. It was always a strategy. We agreed with and amplified the most hysterical claims of leftists, until they made fools of themselves in the terror that Trump was literally mecha-Hitler come again. Hillary's alt-right speech might have sealed the election for us in fact; when Hillary railed against a cartoon frog, everybody saw how out of touch she was with Internet culture, and she lost a lot of young people who might have otherwise pulled the lever for her. /pol/ put a living meme into the White House. Not bad for a bunch of psi wizard internet Nazis.

You should check us out some time. hate/pol/ too, not the 4kids version. If you can get over the initial culture shock, you might discover that we punch far above our weight in influencing things for the better.

Why so hard up on the alt right frogposters, Mr. Prescott. They're only as offensive and ludicrous as liberals tell them they can't be. It's the same mentality that saw gun sales set records for 15 consecutive months. The more the left threatens to take something, the more we want to do it. And make no mistake liberals, political correctness is not about politeness or civility. It's about fear. We've been afraid to speak plainly for a long time, lest some disgusting, fat blue haired social justice warrior attempt to get us fired. No more. If fear is the left's tool, we'll respond in kind. Say hello to the God Emperor.

And the left has no one to blame but itself. Being a sanctimonious scold and labeling every little disagreement as prima facie evidence of racism has made them objects of deserving ridicule and scorn. And if we're going to be hanged for sheep as lambs why not go all the way? If I'm a racist sexist bigot homophobe islamophobe for disagreeing with the left on the smallest minutiae of policy how much worse can posting covetous Jew memes on 4chan really be, especially as the online left devolves into an orgy of flag burning and assassination threats. Pepe the Frog is worse than that? Not to mention, the alt right might represent a break with the mechanistic materialist paradigm insofar as they view the current strain of crusading, proselytizing atheism as part of the left's erosion of Western civilization. Their half-joking devotion to Kek and meme magic is part of this.

"... the alt right might represent a break with the mechanistic materialist paradigm insofar as they view the current strain of crusading, proselytizing atheism as part of the left's erosion of Western civilization."

Certain people in Weimar Germany probably found the Nazis' fascination with the occult and the ancient Teutonic worship of Wotan refreshing in much the same way. The mystical cult that surrounded Hitler was a reaction against materialism, in a sense.

I don't feel that I need to eat crow, since my only crime was trusting the pollsters and aggregators, who totally blew it.

Or maybe I need to have a few crow buffalo wings, for this reason if I am to be candid: I don't feel much regret now that Hillary *won't* be president. There are three parts to this.

First, it's clear she would have been president without the House or Senate. It would have been the grinding kind of war of attrition that I'm sick of. Nothing would have gotten done.

Second, the reason I wanted Hillary in the first place was that I thought (and still think) that she would have been a more effective warrior against the GOP than Obama. She didn't have any particular ideas that inspired. So I don't feel that I have had to give up some great vision or anything.

Third, this relates to this comment by Kathleen:

||The last time a Republican was in office, we had a total disaster of a war and a financial collapse. ||

Yes--but Trump *isn't* a Republican! I opposed Trump mostly because of his terrible rhetoric. I am on record here as having been enthusiastic about his off-template nature. The ultimate paradox is that, granted neither the House nor Senate was going to go Dem, we are actually more likely to get *some* Progressive goals accomplished under Trump than Hillary.

I am also gratified to see Trump behave like a gracious gentleman after his victory.

It may be foolish optimism. I prefer to call it cautious optimism at this point. Trump is a very strange political anomaly indeed. My fingers are crossed that he serves as a good leader of this country.

OK Kathleen. I see you are getting a bit ‘nervy’. Did I strike a sore point with you. I really couldn’t tell from your comment about “garbage about ‘ladies’” and “blaming the victim”. What is that all about? I didn’t say anything about blaming the victim. I simply am reminiscing about a time when female humans were ‘ladies' and respected by men---not jungle animals in heat or women pretending to be men.

Enlighten me! Expand a bit about what you think is a typical Republican attitude about blaming the victim? What are you talking about here?

I don’t follow what you mean by hoping that I don’t put my words into action. What words? What lawsuit will I find myself in if I expect women (and men) whom I may employ to behave in a civilized manner while on the job; to treat all customers and patients with respect; to speak cordially without resorting to the “F-word” in every other sentence; and to dress and groom appropriately for a position in a medical facility.

I suggest you read Michael’s comments above about “thought attacks”. I think you are having a Grand Mal seizure because the Liberal liar, cheat, influence peddler, and facilitator of a sexual predator will not ever become President of the United States. Good riddance! Get over it Kathleen! - AOD